Peace, Discomfort and Reconciliation

Learning All Around Us

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about ritual.

Whether it is kneeling before entering a pew or pointing to the sky when we run a yellow light, ritual stands as a flourish to the mundane day-to-day and gives us meaning.

I think about graduation ceremonies and funerals. The passing of the days, marked and celebrated in ways that push through time. Nothing has really changed, but we feel different.

We make meaning from these rituals; we learn by performing them.

There is a type of learning, a more social learning, that happens outside the walls of a school building. This type of learning is more associative, more grounded in connection than fact, and often felt more deeply than what we find between the covers of a textbook.

Our development is shaped by these institutions. As such, they deserve no less scrutiny than our K12 systems.

A Growing Discomfort

I was raised Episcopal, the Christian religion in the English tradition, descending from Henry VIII’s rift with Rome. I wasn’t an every-Sunday worshiper, but I had long stretches where I was very occupied thinking about the words of Christ.

At seventeen, I refused confirmation. “Sealed as Christ’s own forever,” was not for me. I’m owned by no one.

What I noticed then and continue to think about now is a deep conflict between what religion offers—connection, comfort, meaning—and the habits of thought it encourages. What comforts us in religion—specifically, acts of subordination and obedience made habitual through ritual—can truncate our development.

When we are not encouraged to question, we may fall out of practice, letting our critical faculties atrophy like an unused limb.

In the Bible, James instructs the penitent to “submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil…”. I remember the first time I read these words: I liked the part about resisting the Devil. I saw it as resisting our internal impulses toward selfishness and joy in harming another.

But that word “submit” stuck in my mind. It made me uncomfortable.

The more submission rolled around in my mind, the more it disturbed me. It drove me to different books.

Submission vs. Humility

I don’t claim that all religion is inherently submissive. Many traditions, such as Talmudic debate or Buddhist koans, embrace questioning. They encourage their practitioners to grope in the dark. They request humility from their adherents, not blind submission.

Embracing the idea that we could be wrong shows intellectual strength. It’s what distinguishes argument from salesmanship.

Prodigal, Outcast, or Rebel

In my early twenties, I met a friend named L—. He was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. At eighteen, he chose to go to college, which his family interpreted as a turning away from them and Christ.

They cut off ties and left their son unmoored, no longer able to participate in the rituals that raised him.

I don’t raise this point for sentiment but to clarify the stakes.

Our Thoughts, Ourselves

Developmentally, the thoughts we repeat most often become who we are. The more we think about something, the more comfortable we are with it resting, unquestioned, in our mind.

More technically: the various patterns of neural energy, brought up again and again, carve neural grooves, patterns of expression, that we can hone and deploy when our environment demands.

How does repeated mental giving way settle in the mind? What residue does the memory leave behind?

I don’t want to over-extend: some of the most rigorous thinkers did their work in pursuit of godliness. From the cloisters of early Christian thinkers to the imagined realms of modern fantasy writers, religion has been fertile ground for some of the most impactful writing in my life. I deeply respect the thought of Augustine and Aquinas and their place in the western tradition. The works of CS Lewis and Tolkien were needed escapes in my upbringing.

The words of Christ, allegorically so, echoed in the journeys of orcs, elves, and lions.

Religion’s Social Impact

Beyond the personal, the social impact of religion is undeniable.

Religion can serve as a balm for a sometimes frightening and complex world. It protected me in my youth; the stories told shielded me from the dark questions of existence: am I alone? Is there meaning in this world?

Not only did it protect me, it also connected me to others.

We read texts in unison and sung hymns together. We had the same stories wash over us from the pulpit. Our togetherness was enacted in these rituals. All of the anxieties of youth were quieted for a moment, buttressed by the knowledge that I wasn’t alone.

And our worship intersected with culture; we passed on recipes for beer bread, the words of the gospel, and the rituals of the day-to-day, our way of doing things.

When I started teaching, I was in a Black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Religion was big for many of my students. Church, to some of their families, wasn’t just ritual, it was the enacting of culture, a culture not recognized fully in the eyes of the dominant culture. Religion offered the protection and affirmation that the segregated society they were raised in didn’t.

I was always enamored with how forcefully some of my parents or coworkers would speak of their religion. How ardent their conviction was.

“I do this because I trust in Christ.”

“We will make it through, because I have faith in Him.”

The power to sustain in these words is undeniable. Belief may bolster our resolve in the face of oppression.

So we are left with an interesting tension. Religion is a source of strength for people that I love and respect, though personally it does not resonate on the same level with me.

Is it possible faith works as a binder for some and a divider for others?

An Alternative Lens

Like religion, science offers a kind of protection from the unknown, but of a different sort. Even so, I later recognized the models I learned were also heuristics: the diagram of the cell, the fluctuations of alleles over time, they all simplify an immensely complex world.

At its core science invites us to question, test and entertain the possibility of alternatives.

In science, we practice criticality.

Epistemological Liberation

Some say there isn’t any such thing as a universal, accepted truth. There is power in this challenge.

I’m not saying there isn’t a shared world we all experience—if I don’t eat, I get hungry, most people I know do—but there is intellectual strength in challenging the very frame of how we collectively think.

In this way, the ability to question strengthens rather than diminishes our shared world: What we are told about the world might not be true. It might be said in the interest of the sayer.

Just as simplifications can protect, so can questions. We don’t have to accept unequal treatment: aren’t we all equal? We don’t have to accept exploitation: don’t we all have value?

Questioning is standing on one’s own intellectual two feet. It’s the opposite of submission; it’s an affirming act. Grappling with the existential questions (am I alone? Is there any meaning to things?) makes our moments of insight and connection that much more savory.

We are primed from birth to take in information and build mental structures. Over time, as we fumble in the dark, we chip away at the unknown.

Resilience and Self-Creation

I speak with L— often, now many years after his break with the church. He has rebuilt his life around a chosen family, close friends, and hobbies. He found the community he once had in church in other places. It was not easy, and a lingering anxiety betrays the hurt originally caused, but he is alright.

Humans are resilient and can recover from a vast array of slights. It is difficult for me to forgive an organization that can cause such harm while promising deliverance.

The Peace

My absolute favorite ritual in an Episcopal service was shaking hands and exchanging hugs during a portion called “the peace”. During this section, you greeted the people around you and said, “peace be with you.”

Not riches. Not good fortune. Not freedom from pain. Not even love.

I wish you peace.

When I sit with my thoughts and embrace the stillness, what I know brings me a sense of calm. Some of what I know comes from science class. Some from the stories I’ve read in books. Some from the conversations I’ve had over coffee.

Through learning, I can make the mental models that allow me to sit in peace in a complex world. It‘s the same stillness I felt in church.

A Way Forward

I can see an argument being made that there’s a place for religion in protecting the hard-won productivity of our society. Too much questioning and the jobs that allow us to live don’t get done. Some of us need to be subordinate to the needs of the whole. I understand the impulse, but in its stark utility, we practice reducing individuals to instruments.

Marx and Christ agree on the equality of man.

We must each ask if the religion we practice serves our purposes. Do our practices of thought amplify our aims or do they hold us back? If it does the former, we are better for it. There may be ways to accept faith deeply without sacrificing a questioning core, though I am skeptical.

But if religion, our ritual of the soul, doesn’t serve our needs, there are other systems of thought. We can honor humanity, question systems and build models of our world that match what we’ve discovered as a people. We can practice ways of questioning, analyzing, sharing and sustaining.

In all things, we must keep trudging forward. The rise of hate, violence, global climate disruption and rising inequality all demand solutions if we wish to thrive. These solutions will require effort, but more importantly they will require new thought.

Let us rise to the challenge of today and cast off any systems of thought that limit the power of what if? or what else?

Existential dread may seep back in. Let it. The agita may spur us to motion.

Peace’s calm must be earned.